What happened when Hélio fought Kimura?

In October 1951 Hélio Gracie fought Masahiko Kimura, a judo fighter from Japan. ⁶ Hélio lost. Kimura won with a bent arm shoulder lock, and jiu-jitsu has called that lock the kimura ever since. ^6,22

Three hours

In 1955 Hélio fought his old student, Valdemar Santana. The fight went on for more than three hours. Hélio lost that one too. ^6,106

In Brazil there was a tradition of fights with almost no rules. The Gracies invited fighters of any style to try their jiu-jitsu, and that invitation became known as the Gracie Challenge. ⁹ Their old rivals were the fighters of luta livre, a Brazilian wrestling style. ⁹

A name from the telly

The name for those no rules fights, vale tudo, means "anything goes". It only became common in 1959 and 1960, because of a television show in Rio. Two of the hosts were Gracies: Carlson and Carley. ⁹

Carlson Gracie

Carlson was Carlos Gracie's eldest son, born on 13 August 1932. After he stopped fighting in 1970 he ran an academy in Copacabana, a famous part of Rio. ¹⁴

His school was tough. His style was strong and pressing, with takedowns and lots of judo and wrestling. People called it a "warrior style". He welcomed students from every background, and they trained in big groups and competed hard against each other. ¹⁴

Lots of famous things come from his school. His student Ricardo De La Riva has a guard, a way of fighting from your back, named after him. A judo fighter called Ezequiel Paraguassu trained there and made the Ezekiel choke famous. His black belts started big teams like Nova União and American Top Team. ¹⁴ Carlson's school was different from the Gracie Academy linked to Hélio, which kept to a more traditional, self-defence way of teaching. ¹⁴

Carlson also gave the art a word. "Creonte" was a character in a Brazilian soap opera, and Carlson used the name for a student who left his academy for another team. ¹⁴ It shows how much some teams care about loyalty. Carlson died on 1 February 2006. ¹⁴

Rolls Gracie

One more teacher matters for many academies today. Rolls Gracie, another member of the family, was born in 1951 and died in 1982. His students included Carlos Gracie Jr., Romero "Jacaré" Cavalcanti and Mauricio Gomes. ¹⁰ Carlos Jr. went on to start Gracie Barra, Cavalcanti started Alliance, and Gomes brought jiu-jitsu to Britain. ^10,11,12

But jiu-jitsu was still mostly a Brazilian thing. Then Hélio's eldest son moved to California.